In March 2011 over 800 schools participated in The Big Pedal, pedalling 600,000 school journeys by bike over just 15 days. This year The Big Pedal wants 1,000 schools to take part and make the challenge an even greater success. Get your school on board and register them at The Big Pedal website.

The Big Pedal is a giant inter-school cycling competition spanning 15 school days in March (5th – 23rd March 2012). It works a bit like the Tour de France in that each day of the race is a new stage following a different Sustrans cycle route around the UK.

Schools encourage pupils, parents and staff to cycle and scoot to school each day and the more that do, the faster their time will be for each stage of the race. Most schools take part in the whole three week challenge, but schools can also just enter one or more of three daily stages on Tuesday 6th, Thursday 15th and Wednesday 21st March.

Find out more at The Big Pedal website.

The Cycling City and Towns Programme awarded funding to successful towns (and one city) to help them deliver a range of measures designed to get more people cycling. The programme aimed to increase investment in cycling in the participant towns and city to equivalent levels of investment made in the best European cycling cities, with an aim of proving that increased funding and bespoke projects could have a significant impact on cycling rates.

In addition to infrastructure improvements and promotional activity, funding was also allocated to Bikeability training for both children and adults, helping them to develop the necessary skills and confidence to make use of the new and improved cycle routes being provided. All projects have recognised the importance of providing high quality cycle training, both in terms of encouraging completely new cyclists, and in helping occasional cyclists to cycle more often.

The full reports for all Cycling Towns and the Cycling City can be found at http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/cycling-city-and-towns-end-of-programme-reports/

Follow the links below to watch the videos.

For parents: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/transportgovuk?feature=watch#p/c/1/aKxFIiTRS9c

For teachers:

http://www.youtube.com/user/transportgovuk?feature=watch#p/c/2/Gj44JmWXHwI

For Local Highway Authorities:

http://www.youtube.com/user/transportgovuk?feature=watch#p/c/0/nmrPhhUXs40

The study, which targeted parents of children in Years 6 and 7 across England, had the following key findings:

• Parents think that formal cycle training is important for their children – more than eight in ten respondents indicated that it was ‘important’, including four in ten who stated it was ‘very important’;
• Of those whose children had participated in Bikeability, 90% said that it had improved their child’s safety on the road; and
• Around one in twenty respondents were aware of Bikeability spontaneously, especially mothers.

The full report can be found at http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/bikeability-brand-research.

Transport Minister Norman Baker today announced that £2,083,976 has been allocated to 206 schools across England to fund over 50,000 Bikeability cycle training places this year. 

This follows a commitment given earlier this year by the DfT to support and provide funding contributions for Bikeability for the remainder of the parliament.  A total of £11m has been made available for cycle training during financial year 2011/12, helping to deliver up to 275,000 cycle training places to school children aged between 10-11. 

Norman Baker announced the funding whilst on a visit to Chalk Ridge Primary School in Basingstoke, where he observed children taking part in Level 2 Bikeability training which involves cycling on the road. Chalk Ridge Primary School will have 52 training places delivered.

Norman Baker said:

“This Government is strongly committed to cycling – it is a crucial part of building a healthy and sustainable transport network for the future.  That is why we have provided £11m of funding this year for the Bikeability programme, which not only promotes the benefits of cycling as a healthy and enjoyable way of getting around, but enables children to do it safely and confidently.”

Local Authorities bid for Bikeability grants in advance of the financial year starting.  In addition, Schools Games Organiser Host Schools – who are responsible for co-ordinating PE and school sport with partner schools – bid for grants via the Youth Sport Trust.  There are two opportunities each year for them to bid for funding and today’s announcement sees the first allocation.  There will be another allocation of funding in November this year.   

Jim Blaber, Deputy Head, Chalk Ridge Primary School, said:

“The Bikeability scheme is very important; it allows pupils to develop a lifelong skill, encourages independence, promotes a healthy life style choice and ensures that the children are safer when cycling on our busy roads.”

For the full article, see http://www.dft.gov.uk/news/press-releases/dft-press-20110109

Read more on this development here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/news/press-releases/dft-press-20110909

The guidance provides advice to National Standard Instructors on how to help disabled people achieve National Standard outcomes. The guide aims to do this by equipping instructors with the knowledge, confidence and potential strategies they might need to deliver effective cycle training to disabled people.

The guide was developed in consultation with a number of experts in the field and aims to provide ideas for consideration and the means to identify what training methods, techniques and equipment might be appropriate for any specific situation.

The guide can be downloaded from the National Standard for cycle training area of the DfT’s website:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/ctsb/delivery

The whole of the National Standard for cycle training area of the DfT website has also been updated to include material on the recent introduction of Instructor Training Organisations. The full site can be accessed here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/ctsb/.

The DfT will also continue to support the running of the Bikeability scheme and the National Standard for Cycle Training that underpins it.

However, given the financial circumstances there is also a need to significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency.  As part of this, the current instructor bursary grants will not be extended beyond 31 March 2011, when most other existing arrangements under the Cycling England programme cease. The Department is no longer able to support the cost of administering the grant, or justify the subsidising new trainers at a time when overall capacity is healthy.  To offset the ending of bursaries after March 2011 the grants awarded to local authorities for Bikeability training can also in future be used to fund the cost of training new national standard instructors or assistant instructors.  Where any of the grant is used in this way the delivery target of child training places is not reduced. DfT expects the recipients of the bursary to deliver an equivalent number of free cycle training places based on the £40.00 awarded per training place.  Local authorities can also use their grant to make funds available to train new instructors or assistant instructors to Instructor Training Organisations or to individuals not employed directly by the authority. It will be for individual authorities in conjunction with the trainer or training company awarded the grant to then account for the trade off in free training places either within the authority’s delivery programme or elsewhere. 

This ongoing commitment to fund Bikeability over 4 years will hopefully give individuals and organisations the confidence to invest in training themselves.

You can read the details of today’s announcement, along with more about the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, by clicking here and going to the Department for Transport’s press release.

You can also read details of the Local Transport White paper at http://www.dft.gov.uk/press/speechesstatements/statements/baker20110119

A complete list of all awards made to local authorities for Bikeability from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund can be found here.

In spring 2010 the Department for Transport (DfT) commissioned Ipsos MORI to carry out a research study into the impact and perceptions of cycle training, with a specific focus on Bikeability.

The results are great news for Bikeability – the majority of children who have taken part in the training (from years 5 and 6) believe, along with their parents, that it has improved their safety on the road, with 86% of children saying that they now feel more confident cycling on roads. Riding more safely doesn’t come at the expense of fun, however! Children who received Bikeability training indicated they were riding their bikes more often, and almost all (91%) are likely to suggest that their friends take part too.

A summary of the research, together with a link to the full report, can be found at www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/cycling/bikeabilitytraining/.

Please note that if you would like to use or interpret the data in any way other than that which appears in the official press releases, summaries of full research report it is important that you seek assistant from the Bikeability support team first. This is a requirement that Ipsos MORI place on all their research, and in this research it is particularly important because some data sets are not directly comparable.

If you were unable to attend the briefings, or would like to view the presentations again, you can do so by following the links below.

Download: Leeds Briefing 6th Dec 2010

Download: Bristol Briefing 8th Dec 2010

Download: London Briefing 10th Dec 2010

Download: Norman Baker MP Bikeability Video (AVI file 41mb)